Content Warning: Mentions of Sexual Assault

I fear when I encounter a group of people who I think might bully me, I hear what they’re saying to each other in passing:

“That bitch is fine”,

“Bro, you’re such a fucking retard”,

“Quit being a little bitch”

All it takes is one quip, and I’m suddenly directing effort into stopping my hands from shaking.

I’m a dorm resident at UMBC, today a woman was doing her laundry at the same time as me. She was accompanied by two guys. They’re doing the socially inept “banter” thing, she tells them that they should “totally step in that mystery puddle there”, they’re teasing her for dropping one of her articles of clothing, calling her “smelly” at one point; it’s all just fun and games, right? At least that’s what part of me was hoping for. This cycle of banter continues and it starts to feel like they’re hounding her, snickering at her every move, “why are you guys watching me do my laundry?” she asks rhetorically, “go outside, you’re being weird”. She’s codeswitching, co-opting the brutish way they’re talking, but it feels like that’s the best she could have done when talking to these two. I would be lying if I said I couldn’t feel a real tension in the room. I say to them to try and diffuse the situation, “and I’m here to watch you two watch her do laundry, like a triangle.” One of them responds, “Yeah you’ve been standing there for a minute, with your fucking eagle eyes, bro.”

Some time goes by, she asks them to leave once again so she doesn’t feel like she’s being watched. One of them says, referring to me, “That’s wrong. If we left, this guy would be watching you.” I reflexively say back, “Actually I’m watching you guys.” “Exactly.”, she replies. Eventually the three of them wander out of the room, off to continue their day together.

I wonder if I could or should have said something more.

Bare with me as I share another anecdotal thought:

UMBC does (ostensibly) a lot to combat sexual assault: mandated online training for all students, the women’s center, the ECR, emergency blue light phones scattered across the campus, the list goes on for a while. As a masc-presenting man, I have rarely felt at risk of being sexually assaulted (although it of course still happens), and as such the threat of someone around me being a sexual predator has rarely crossed my mind. Because of this perspective, when I first started seeing all of the campus initiatives, I saw them as exactly that: Initiatives, pamphlets, blue light phones, speeches. I understood that it happened, but it didn’t feel “immediate” to me.

Recently I’ve heard word of people being sexually assaulted on campus, and that has suddenly made it feel immediate to me. All of those initiatives and pamphlets were addressing a real problem, one that had gone partly unspoken to me.

I try to advocate for social trust, and that people are innocent until proven guilty, but I can’t help but wonder now when I walk through the halls of the RAC, or along the streets at night, if one of the people I encounter is an active perpetrator. This does not mean accusing someone based on a hunch, but it does make the potentiality of the threat much realer to me.

Social Dysfunction

Now the fear I feel is recontextualized. To me, I experience destructive personalities as insults and bullying, to others, it could be an act of physical violence. The initiatives enacted by this campus implicitly confirm: they exist, and they are in my proximity.

Roxane Gay’s “My body is a cage of my own making” uses sensory imagery to make her recounting of her sexual assault immediate to the reader. I believe this immediacy is important in fixing the problem: not just knowing the harm, but feeling it too, to a certain extent. We must have empathy for victims of sexual assault, as it motivates change. I know this post doesn’t necessarily talk exclusively about bodies, but the readings still made me think of a social dysfunction that was already weighing on my mind.

When someone is twisting another’s arm, trying to extract some kind of concession out of them during a laundry room banter, not letting up until they concede, disregarding any autonomy or space the person deserves, utilizing their power in the situation, I can’t help but see the parallels between that and sexual assault. I hate to present the idea that someone’s superficial social behaviors could be indicative of their social behaviors when engaging with power dynamics where there is potential for harm, but I believe it can. I still want to give people the benefit of the doubt in situations like this, but I don’t know for certain if they’re a would-be-perpetrator or not. Disregard for a person’s autonomy and rights in one instance reflects a disregard for autonomy in others.

This is why I feel it important to instill real empathy in people, so they can avoid harmful outcomes in all situations. Our social fabric is chaotic and fragile, and it’s clear there’s work that needs to be done in correcting these social harms. I look to these initiatives, especially the people who are a part of them, as a source of hope that sexual violence (and other social dysfunctions) will not be accepted.